Carmen’s Story: When it all changed.

Everything here happened to me online. However, it’s as scary as it actually happening in the real world.

It’s been a while since this happened and I haven’t really told anyone about this, I realise now that I should’ve gotten help sooner. I was confused, very young when this happened. It’s quite scary and shocking at the age I was, only eleven and something like this was happening to me. You might’ve heard of an app called ‘Musical.ly’ which is basically an app where you can lip sync to songs and post it on there, lots of young people and even teenagers are using it. At the time my parents, my friends and I thought it was a fun, safe app that was protected from anything…

Disturbing.

But for me, that wasn’t the case. One day I had posted a musically and within a few minutes I had received a message from somebody. Sadly, I hadn’t taken pictures of these messages so I have no evidence. But he messaged me saying, ‘You’re so cute… If you weren’t so young I would date you’ this made me a little nervous. I checked out his profile and my guess was right, I was pretty sure he was an adult. His profile picture was a picture of his genitia. This was extremely disturbing for me, mainly as I was only eleven. It was an unforgettable moment for me, I’m still scarred from that moment. He has two videos up, they were both just showing a condom packet, I wasn’t quite sure what it was then though. I ignored him after he said that but he messaged me back again saying, ‘Don’t ignore me, I’m lonely. Talk to me’ being the stupid person I was, I replied when I should’ve blocked him or kept ignoring him, the conversation continued and he was randomly saying about how he makes models of cars. Later on he started saying dirty things, followed by ‘I shouldn’t be saying things like this, you’re too young’ I replied with something about asking him to stop, yet he continued. He started asking questions like ‘Where do you live?’ ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ ‘How old are you exactly?’ I didn’t want to answer any, I’ve found a picture of when I asked him to stop, after that he never messaged me again. Sorry if this was a waste of time but I haven’t told anyone about this and wanted to lift a huge weight off of my chest, I’m still scarred to this very day. Often I draw pictures of something like a girl cowering down (representing me or any other people in this situation) And a shadowy figure towering over her. I’m not sure if I should tell anyone else about this… Thank you for taking your time to read my story.

Related

The When You're Ready Project is a community for survivors of sexual violence to share their stories and have their voices heard, finding strength in one another. When you're ready to share your story, we will be here.